SaveMaineHockey

Signatures

290

5,641

Opened on December 14, 2011

Fill The Alfond to Save Maine Hockey!Our Signature Goal: We are looking for the first "sellout" of the season at Alfond Arena. We will use the goal of the 5,641 signatures, the capacity of the arena prior to the renovation project. Please sign the petition, and share it with those you know care deeply about the future of Maine Hockey. Also, if you are a UMaine alum, please indicate your year of graduation after your name. If you are a current student, please indicate the year that you will graduate. What would we like to happen? This petition is to ask The University of Maine athletic director, Steve Abbott, to take the Maine Hockey program in a new direction effective immediately. We feel Coach Whitehead is a likeable person, and appreciate his efforts over the past ten years to move this program forward. We recognize that he came into an impossible position following the passing of Coach Walsh. That being said, we feel that his ability to motivate and inspire this group of young men to reach the bar of excellence that is "Maine Hockey" has passed. Additionally, we are not attempting to tear down this team. It is quite the contrary. All of us, whether we participate in a Facebook group, post in hockey forums, or sign this petition, care deeply about this team and would like to see it back in the upper echelon of college hockey. We are only asking for the athletic department to find a coach that can deliver that result. There are many people who have given up the luxury of attending hockey games. Some can no longer afford to go, while others are boycotting this team and will stay away until a change is made. The latter group is growing everyday. These are tough economic times, and in order to justify spending money in the local economy and supporting the university there needs to be a quality product to purchase. Attendance is the key to the future of this program, and the athletic department at UMaine. We just had a nationally televised game against an archrival, which only drew 4900 fans. Viewers nationwide had an opportunity to see a virtually empty Alfond Arena for the final five minutes of the contest against Boston University. Will we have national TV games next season?

Without attendance and winning seasons, we will no longer be able to recruit the best players in the country. You only have to look as far as Lake Superior State after Jeff Jackson left the program in 1996. It is much easier to keep a winning program than to try and rebuild a former champion. We just spent $5,000,000 to renovate Alfond Arena. Let's spend another roughly $400,000 to "renovate" the product that is on the ice.